A's come back again, force Tigers to Game 5

Oct. 10, 2012

Updated Aug. 21, 2013 1:17 p.m.

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Oakland Athletics left fielder Coco Crisp (4) celebrates after he hit single to score Seth Smith and win the game, 4-3, in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the American League division series against the Detroit Tigers in Oakland on Wednesday. BEN MARGOT, AP

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The Oakland Athletics' Coco Crisp celebrates after he hit single to score Seth Smith and win the game, 4-3, against the Detroit Tigers. MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ, AP

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The Oakland Athletics' Coco Crisp gets a pie to the face after he drove in the winning run against the Detroit Tigers in the ninth inning Wednesday. MARCIO JOSE SANCHEZ, AP

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Miguel Cabrera of the Detroit Tigers reacts during their loss to the Oakland Athletics in Game 4 of the American League Division Series at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. EZRA SHAW, GETTY IMAGES

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Coco Crisp of the Oakland Athletics hits a walkoff single against the Detroit Tigers during Game 4 of the American League Division Series. THEARON W. HENDERSON, GETTY IMAGES

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Coco Crisp (4) of the Oakland Athletics celebrates with the team after hitting a walk-off single against the Detroit Tigers during Game 4 of the American League Division Series. THEARON W. HENDERSON, GETTY IMAGES

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Coco Crisp of the Oakland Athletics is congratulated by teammates after he hit a game-winning single to beat the Detroit Tigers in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the American League Division Series. EZRA SHAW, GETTY IMAGES

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Josh Donaldson of the Oakland Athletics hits a double in the ninth inning against the Detroit Tigers during Game 4 of the American League Division Series. EZRA SHAW, GETTY IMAGES

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The Detroit Tigers' Omar Infante celebrates after he scored on a single by Avisail Garcia in the eighth inning of Game 4 of the American League division series against the Oakland Athletics. BEN MARGOT, AP

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Detroit Tigers relief pitcher Al Alburquerque pumps his fist after delivering a pitch in the seventh inning of Game 4 of an American League division series. ERIC RISBERG, AP

Oakland Athletics left fielder Coco Crisp (4) celebrates after he hit single to score Seth Smith and win the game, 4-3, in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the American League division series against the Detroit Tigers in Oakland on Wednesday. BEN MARGOT, AP

OAKLAND – When the Oakland A's signed Coco Crisp in January, the experts scoffed. When he was still failing to hit his weight in June, the move looked even worse.

Back then, not even the most optimistic A's fan could have come up with the scene that unfolded Wednesday night.

Crisp's two-out single in the bottom of the ninth gave the A's a thrilling 4-3 victory over the Detroit Tigers, forcing the division series to a decisive Game 5 on Thursday night at the Coliseum, where 36,385 fans rocked the concrete bowl to its core celebrating Crisp.

It was the A's major league-leading 15th walk-off victory of the season, and Crisp has driven in the winner in three of them.

"I don't think there's anybody that we feel better about in that situation than Coco," A's manager Bob Melvin said.

Crisp's hit, which followed Seth Smith's two-run game-tying double against closer Jose Valverde, breathed new life into an A's team that refuses to go away. Down 2-0 in the series, they seemed to be dead. Trailing by two runs in the ninth inning of Game 4, they really seemed to be dead.

But here they are, with a chance to become the fifth team in baseball history to overcome a 2-0 deficit to win a best-of-five series. (The Giants will have the same chance earlier in the day.) The Tigers will send Justin Verlander to the mound against A's rookie Jarrod Parker. Although the pitching matchup certainly favors Detroit, it seems hard to bet against the A's at this point.

"We have to keep everybody on edge to pull off something magical," Crisp said. "Their pitching staff is great."

The Tigers pitchers, led by strikeout artist Max Scherzer, had whiffed the A's 11 times in eight innings when they handed the ball and a 3-1 lead to Valverde.

Josh Reddick, who had struck out in eight of his 13 at-bats in the series, led off with a ground ball single into right field. Josh Donaldson then lined a double off the left-field fence. Smith followed with a double into left-center, driving in the tying runs and putting the champagne back on ice in the Tigers' clubhouse.

Valverde got the next two outs, temporarily preserving the tie, but then Crisp delivered the winner.

"He comes through every time," Smith said of Crisp, whose average was .158 on June 6, when he began a hot streak that coincided with a team-wide burst that turned around Oakland's season.

Tigers manager Jim Leyland, a salty old baseball man who has seen just about everything in his career, was able to take a philosophical view of the loss.

"That's why this is the greatest game of all," Leyland said. "It looked like we'd get it. We didn't get the 27 outs. You get tested all the time, and this is a good test."

Up until the ninth-inning comeback, the game had been about a towering Prince Fielder homer, the Detroit pitching staff and a critical baserunning mistake by the A's.

Scherzer had outdueled A's rookie A.J. Griffin for the first half of the game. Griffin gave up a run in the third and he hung an 0-2 pitch that Fielder obliterated. Fielder, who had been robbed of a homer by Crisp a night earlier, hit this one so far over the right-field fence that Reddick didn't even bother to turn and watch it.

Scherzer, meanwhile, was cruising with a 2-0 lead until his velocity began to dip in the sixth. Crisp fought him for a 10-pitch at-bat before reaching second when a ball got past Fielder at first base for an error. Stephen Drew then drove him in with a ball into the right-center gap, but Drew, perhaps over-excited by the crowd, tried to go for a triple, and he was thrown out.

Having committed the baseball sin of making the first out at third base, which is particularly egregious when down by a run, Drew would have had something to think about all winter if his teammates hadn't bailed him out.

While the comeback might have shocked the Tigers, and fans watching on television across the nation, it was just another chapter in the remarkable A's story.

This is a team, remember, that won 94 regular season games with an anonymous roster cobbled together on the fly. It's a team that trailed the Texas Rangers by 13 games in late June and by five games with nine to play, yet won the division. They needed to overcome a four-run deficit in the final game of the regular season to win the division title.

So a two-run deficit in the ninth?

"We've done it too many times to feel like we weren't going to win," Melvin said. "We just don't feel like it's going to end for us. That was the feeling in the ninth inning."

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